Drinking Closer to Home

A Novel

About the Book

“Riveting and startling….So raw and funny I wanted to read parts aloud to strangers.” —Dylan Landis, author of Normal People Don't Live Like This

“Jessica Anya Blau…creates characters that have a lot more depth and more of a past than one often sees in fiction these days…. I found it impossible not to care about them—and equally impossible to forget them. Blau is a magnificent writer, and this is one special novel.” —Steve Yarbrough, author of Safe from the Neighbors

From Jessica Anya Blau, critically-acclaimed author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, comes a new novel of California, growing up, and learning to love your insane family. Perfect for fans of Jess Walter, Kevin Wilson, and Michael Chabon, Drinking Closer to Home is a poignant and funny exploration of one family’s over-the-top eccentricities—a book Ron Tanner calls “heartfelt and hilarious.”

Book Description

They say you can never really go home again. Adult siblings Anna, Portia, and Emery are about to discover just how true that is.

Educator and Librarian Resources

Critical Praise

“At the end of the day, the Stein family is dysfunctional, foul-mouthed, appalling, loving and ridiculously endearing, thanks to Blau’s hilarious rendition of their group dynamic. Soundtrack? Hotel California. Woody Allen directs.” —

“Jessica Blau’s DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME is heartfelt and hilarious as it explores every nook and cranny of this wonderful (and wild) family. If you want to know why we love our parents and siblings even as they drive us to drink and distraction, you must read this book.” —

“The sharpness of Jessica Blau’s voice and wit never ceases to amaze me. From the first page this surprising novel takes a classic tale--adult children going home again--and turns it on its head. An absorbing, heart-wrenching read.” —

“A very funny -- but also deeply humane -- novel . . . Parental love and booze and drugs and all the complications of becoming an adult: This is a smart book -- a book that makes you cringe and laugh out loud.” —

“If you took Jonathan Franzen, soaked him in Southern California culture, sprinkled him with biting insight and twisted humor, you would get a book that tasted something like DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME.” —

“Jessica Anya Blau has created an unforgettably unique family . . . and done them a great service by placing them in a compelling story that is alternately funny and sad as hell. I don’t think I’d last twelve days in this family, but I could read about them forever.” —

“DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME is as raw and heartbreaking as it is tender. Jessica Anya Blau has written an honest, haunting portrayal of a beguiling yet maddening family, who together come of age amidst the shifting morals of a country on the cusp of tremendous cultural change.” —

“[Blau has] lavished such attention on these people that I found it impossible not to care about them--and equally impossible to forget them.” —

“Hilariously irreverent . . . . This unconventional joy ride of a novel is also an unexpectedly powerful and multi-layered exploration of unbreakable family bonds.” —

“Jessica Anya Blau’s emotional turf is kinship, from its betrayals to its bondsand in DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME she covers this territory with an honesty so raw and funny I wanted to read parts aloud to strangers.” —

“Chekhov knew that laughter and tears are only a breath apart. So does Jessica Anya Blau. The family in her marvelous DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME . . . make[s] beautiful, hilarious music through time and all the spaces in the heart.” —

“DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME is a gloriously rich portrait of three adult children who discover that the tensions and hurts they still have between them are inextricably tied to their laughter and their love.” —

“[H]ilarious and heartbreaking....[A] testament to the impossibility of ever truly ‘leaving home,’ and the great triumph of this book is in Blau’s skillful illumination of how that’s both a blessing and a curse....This novel will stay with you for a very long time.” —

“As perfectly pitched as it is comically painful, DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME echoes a profound Tolstoyan truth about family. Many novelists have a sense for place, the gifted ones deliver life with such fidelity that the truth hits very close to home indeed.” —

“I have never encountered such exciting, eccentric, and lovably flawed characters as those Jessica Anya Blau creates in DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME.” —

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